The Rhythm for Reading programme
Based on experience
Our rhythm-based approach was first developed to support a group of children, nine and ten years of age, who could not access the curriculum, were disruptive in class and did not learn through conventional teaching methods at their ‘outstanding’ (Ofsted rated) school.
Ten years later, the approach was the subject of a five-year research project at UCL Institute of Education and Society, and twelve years ago, it was first developed as a reading intervention programme for schools.
Since then, the Rhythm for Reading Programme has supported reading development in England, Scotland and Wales, serving mainstream and special schools in rural and urban communities. Each school identified the children they were most concerned about and these pupils took part in the programme in groups of ten. These are the average improvements in early reading development for the children in all of these schools after ten weekly sessions of ten minutes:
- Phonological blending – 21 months (CToPP)
- Phonological elision – 11 months (CToPP)
- Reading comprehension – 14 months (NARA II)
For more about our assessment and reporting click here.
Experience has taught us three things:
- Excellent phonics teaching is necessary, but not sufficient for certain children, even when they receive targeted support.
- Persistent problems such as 'fuzzy phonemes', decoding at the word-by-word level, fragile fluency and patchy comprehension affect reading development in all schools to varying degrees.
- Fading or fragmented attention in these children only adds to the challenge of raising standards in early reading development.
Useful links
You can read our safeguarding policy here.
You can read about training here.
Click here to book a Discovery Call.
Click here to apply for CPD training and join the programme.
Rigour is our third 'R'
‘Rhythm, Rigour and Reading’ could have been the name of our programme, as rigour lies at the heart of our reading intervention. We walk our talk and support schools through rigour in three main ways:
- A structured, streamlined system, which builds visible progress week by week.
- Ambitious multi-sensory tasks, which enable us to set expectations of all the children we work with.
- A specific focus on ears, eyes and voices, which we cultivate through highly repetitive, fast-paced, and increasingly complex rhythm-based routines (the fun part!).
“Imagine for a moment a video clip of someone speaking, in which the audio is one quarter of a second behind the image. If they speak slowly, the misalignment doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, but when they speak more quickly, that is when you can really see the problem. When a child’s sensitivity to rhythm is not sufficiently aligned with the smaller details of language processing, rhythm is the key to effective targeted support.”
Dr Marion Long (Founder and Developer)
The main reason that conventional teaching methods cannot bring focus to ‘fuzzy’ phonemes and all the reading difficulties that ensue, is that alignment between ears, eyes and voices is processed subconsciously at the level of milliseconds.
In terms of processing time, the children who are not making expected progress, despite adequate phonics teaching need an intervention that delivers with greater precision. A rhythm-based approach has the capacity to adjust alignment at the level of milliseconds, and therefore supplements and complements what is offered in the conventional teaching of phonics.
Five common mistakes to avoid
Persistent problems from ‘fuzzy phonemes’ to fragile fluency and patchy comprehension prompt us to peel back the superficial layers of early reading development and look at it as a system.
Viewed in this way, phonemes, words, phrases and an entire passage can be read with ease and fluency and understanding.
But progress in early reading is contingent upon: knowledge of language PLUS phonics PLUS sensitivity to rhythm PLUS decoding skills.
Together, these four elements are necessary and sufficient for reading to unfold recursively in a self-generating and therefore a rewarding way.
So, here are five common pitfalls that can be avoided:
When teachers try to develop children’s sensitivity to phonemes, rhythm and fluency, there are five common mistakes that lead to disappointment and frustration.
- When delivering targeted support, teaching phonics in the same way as usual is unlikely to achieve an improved outcome.
- When reading does not flow naturally, simply ‘reading faster’ masks underlying problems and reading becomes ‘pointless’.
- When using rhythm to support reading, shaking a jar of rice or beating a drum while the child reads is intrusive and futile.
- When using rhythm-based exercises and music with the whole class, those who require support don’t have their needs met.
- When fluency is weak, reading easier passages of text eases the pressure on decoding, but doesn’t address the underlying issue.
How the programme works
During the Rhythm for Reading intervention programme, students read music notation with accuracy, fluency and coordination as a group. Individually however, they are each actively engaged in the process of learning how to learn, which involves the development both of self-regulation and metacognition as shown below.
Learning to learn with Rhythm for Reading
| Self-regulation | Metacognition | Application |
|---|---|---|
| Building the capacity for self-control | Building the capacity for learning to learn | Building reading fluency & comprehension |
| Learning to become aware of, maintain and expand focal attention. | Learning to manage control of focal attention, whilst:
|
Learning to discriminate between visually similar symbols, whilst fostering deeper & more consistent management of focal attention. |
| Learning to gauge and anticipate the position of the eyes on the screen. | Remembering to look ahead during tasks: this fosters expectancy, discourages fixation and strengthens an automatic visual response for reading. | The visual component of reading becomes more automatic & the use of focal attention becomes more efficient. |
| Learning to use an assertive voice, whilst reading aloud. | Maintaining an assertive voice during tasks: this fosters sharper definition and deeper personal involvement in reading. Clearer input provides clearer perception of what is read. | The phonological component becomes more sharply defined; focal attention becomes more effectively directed & more sensitive to grammatical structures. |
Individual assessment
All standardised assessments acknowledge that a student’s performance can vary from day to day; therefore a measurement taken on one day is simply a snapshot of their performance and cannot be said to provide a definitive score. Discussing students’ progress with the school provides an essential validity check.
We ask each school to select ten students for diagnostic assessment in order to:
- Support the school in tracking the progress of a group of pupils for whom there is a particular concern or focus (such as Pupil Premium)
- Benchmark the extent of the effectiveness of the reading intervention programme as a reference point for teachers delivering the programme in the school in the future
- Demonstrate the effectiveness of the intervention programme in the context of each participating school as a form of accountability to that school.
- Rule out selection bias when demonstrating the effectiveness of the programme.
Reading comprehension
Most students learn to read more fluently, easily and with better understanding. Progress in this aspect of reading development is measured using the the NARA II (published by GL Assessment), which provides reading ages and standardised scores for reading accuracy, reading comprehension and reading rate for students ranging from six to thirteen years of age.
Phonological awareness
A proportion of students struggle to discern phonemes (the smallest units of sound in language) in early education. Phonological awareness is comprehensively assessed using the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CToPP, published by Pearson). This measure provides standardised scores and age equivalent scores for phonological elision, phonological blending, memory for digits, rapid naming, and phonological blending of non-words, for students ranging from five to twenty-four years of age.